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Water is a human right, not a mere commodity

Allowing large corporations to profit profligately from public water supplies during a time of drought, as is happening in Aberfoyle, Ont., is not only irresponsible, but reprehensible.

Although the permit for Nestlé Waters to extract from a well in Aberfoyle, near Guelph, Ontario, expired July 31, the company has been allowed to continue pumping for its bottled water operation in the midst of a severe drought.
(Guelph Mercury / Tony Saxon)

There is a water fight being waged in the southwestern Ontario town of Aberfoyle.

This is not an isolated skirmish. It is, rather, a local flashpoint in a global movement striving to declare drinking water a basic human right, not a corporate commodity.

Although the permit for Nestlé Waters to extract from a well in Aberfoyle, near Guelph, Ontario, expired July 31, the company has been allowed to continue pumping for its bottled water operation in the midst of a severe drought.

This has incensed many, including the Wellington Water Watchers, which claims the Ministry of Environment, in granting the company an automatic extension, failed to post Nestlé’s renewal application for the customary 30 days of public comment.

The ministry counters that a water-taking permit remains in effect if a renewal application is made at least 90 days prior to expiration; it promises to post Nestlé’s application after vetting the supporting documents.

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In addition to a permit fee, Ontario charges companies a mere $3.71 for every million litres of water. Clearly a pitiful pittance for the source of life.

For Mike Nagy, Board Chair of the Wellington Water Watchers, permitting Nestlé or any other corporate water company to continue extracting under the current licensing process would be both “inappropriate” and “irresponsible.”

In a recent telephone interview, Mr. Nagy stated he was encouraged by Ontario Premier Kathleen Wynne’s recent assertion that 30 years ago, when Ontario’s Permit-To-Take Water regulations were first developed, “we wouldn’t have envisioned an industry that took water and put it in plastic bottles.”

“That’s what I’ve been saying for years,” Mr. Nagy declared.

Consequently, his group, which is “deeply interested” in helping shape water policy on a national scale, has recently announced it has drafted a study proposing stricter controls on water extraction, especially for corporate bottling operations.

Mr. Nagy is among thousands of activists around the globe endeavouring to get us to see water in new ways.

First, they are asking us to see water as a basic human right. Simply put, without water you die. This premise has been affirmed by numerous faith leaders and NGOs around the world, including Pope Francis, as well as the Canadian Catholic Organization for Development and Peace, the Council of Canadians and Maude Barlow, arguably the world’s most potent water paladin.

According to the UN, over 780 million people currently lack access to clean drinking water, prompting the World Economic Forum in January 2015 to declare the water crisis, to be the foremost risk facing global society.

This is particularly relevant, and painfully manifest, in Canada, where two thirds of indigenous communities have been living under a drinking water advisory for the past decade, and one group, the Neskantaga First Nation of Ontario, has been suffering under a “boil water” alert for 20 years.

Additionally, this kind of water advocacy is occurring under the menacing reality of global climate change, which is placing the earth’s surface on a planetary stovetop. Last year, according to NASA, was the hottest on record, and 2000-2010 was the warmest decade since such measurements have been taken. The drought currently plaguing Ontario mirrors that of California and the U.S. Midwest, central Africa, and large swaths of Asia.

Allowing large corporations to profit profligately from public water supplies in light of these realities is not only irresponsible, but reprehensible.

Second, we are being invited to see water not as an inexhaustible resource, but as a finite element in need of careful stewardship and protection. Few could have imagined the millions of buffalo that filled the Great Plains, the Passenger Pigeons that darkened noonday skies, or the innumerable fish of the Grand Banks, ever to fade. But, treated as nuisances or plundered as resources, they have. Access to clean water can also go the way of “extinction.”

Third, we are being called to an ethic of care, not simply an ethic of use, concerning water. We are being invited to view water as a global commons with which we have a deep ontological and physical relationship, rather than as private commodity to be bottled and sold.

Clearly, then, the struggle in Aberfoyle is a critical site where thirst for water and hunger for sustainable relations flow together.

Stephen Bede Scharper teaches in the Masters of Science in Sustainability Management program at the University of Toronto Mississauga. Stephen.scharper@utoronto.ca

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